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Controlling access in IE...

Hi all. Here's my question: The company i work for will be supplying about 50 computer, all connected to the net, for an upcoming event. The computers will be available to the public, and I am trying to restrict access to the majority of the internet, only allowing about 8-10 specific sites to be accesed. Any input would be apreciated, as I have never done this before. Also, information on the same topic using firefox would help.

ps - The "event" is the 2006 CES show in Vegas... let me know if youre coming, I can hook you up

my first piece of advice would be to edit your HOST file ( carefully!) so that access is blocked from the sites you dont want them to go too and ( hopefully!) they will only access the 10 certain sites that you want them too. try this link:

you will have to implement this using group policy editor to do it across the 50 computers quickly, but go into IE and hit the connection tab. hit lan settings, check the 'use a proxy server...' box and hit advanced, set the http, ftp, and whatever other protocol you want limited/restricted to 127.0.0.1. now at the bottom of the advanced window, add the exceptions you want to be allowed. using this method, you would then need to lock IE and windows down as far as possible to prevent people from going around this - including limiting them to using IE.

This Content Advisor way may work, I haven't tested, you could then disable the internet options menu item in internet explorer (or individual tabs of the internet options item) so that the settings can't be changed.

The other option is with internet explorer is to use the internet explorer zones. For your list of approved sites add them to the trusted sites zone and set the security levels accordingly, everything else remains in the internet zone with a security level of high.

You would also want to ensure that these browsers are not being accessed with administrator rights and investigate using the local computer policy to turn the browsers into kiosk browsers by disabling alot of the menu options.

Can you not do this using a gateway firewall, that way any machine that tried to connect out to a non approved website would be blocked regardless of the browser - that seems the logical way to me?

only allowing about 8-10 specific sites to be accesed. Any input would be apreciated, as I have never done this before. Also, information on the same topic using firefox would help.

If you only want 8-10 specific sites to be accessed, you can easily do this in IE.

For IE

Go to Tools, internet options, content, down to "enable" under Content Advisor. Click on approved sites in the field below type the website for example www.lycos.com now select either Always allow(access) or Never (never allow access) in here make your 8-10 specific sites when done, it will prompt you to make a supervisor password (this will prevent other users from disabling your settings) when done apply the changes. Also, its very easy to bypass the content password heres how: